LOVE & GORE
This dark Japanese comedy is really a murderous splatter-fest
FIRST LOVE
★★ ★ out of 5
Cast: Masataka Kubota, Sakurako Konishi Director: Takashi Miike Duration: 1 h 48 m
To lop off one character’s head in a dark comedy is a stylistic choice.
To cut off two seems like overkill. But two is what you get in the latest splatter-fest from director Takashi Miike, alongside various shootings, stabbings, vehicular homicides and an explosion set off by a Rube Goldberg device, or what the Japanese call Pitagora Sōchi.
Masataka Kubota stars as Leo, an unprepossessing boxer who has just learned that he may not have long to live. Feeling equal parts hopeless and reckless, he sees a young woman running from someone in the street and impulsively clotheslines her would-be assailant.
She turns out to be Monica (Sakurako Konishi), a pawn in a game of doublecross in which a crooked cop and a yakuza underling team up to steal a shipment of drugs.
Monica and Leo have a night comparable to the one enjoyed by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke — or it would be if Before Sunrise had included a sword-wielding wronged woman, a literal onearmed bandit, and half the Tokyo police force.
First Love will no doubt appeal to fans of the director, whose specialty is quantity; he has released more than 100 projects to video, television and theatres since his directing debut in 1991.
The rest of us may feel a little worn down by the film’s pacing. The first half spends most of its time setting up the characters and their backstories, including the reason why Monica is haunted by hallucinations of a ghost in white briefs; the second plops everyone into a warehouse and lets them shoot (and stab and slice and pummel) it out.
But if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you should emerge from this one unscathed and moderately entertained.